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The party is very separate from the people who vote for it. I don't have a vote for who becomes Speaker, only a vote for my individual representative, who himself is chosen by both Democrats and Republicans (our primary is open and everyone knows the Democrat is going to win the general election so the real election is in the primary). He's in something like a D+30 district and still threatens to oppose Democratic legislation unless it's more fiscally conservative.
The ancients are dying off, but this isn't resulting in an open race for replacement, they're using their influence to pass it on to chosen successors that share their values. Theoretically there could be a revolution, but politics isn't really just a battle of ideas, but a complex web of relationships and fundraising. One of Hakeem Jeffries primary qualifications for succeeding Pelosi is simply that he can raise a lot of money.
But I agree that's not fixed, and a good chair could really lean into candidates who excite voters rather than are approved by donors. The Obama's of the party win while the machine politicians generally just maintain power in safe districts. You need someone who excites people to flip districts and states.
It's unfortunate that Katie Porter might be eliminated in the initial round in California. We need progressive successors to our own ancients in the senate. Massachusetts has a pretty good bench getting built. Hopefully when Warren steps down Ayanna Pressley will succeed her. I'm not sure if Bernie has anyone in Vermont lined up.
Can't really disagree with much there.... I would say that a party's views (should) reflect those of its voters. Ideally, that's what's supposed to happen in a representative democracy. They're supposed to represent the will of their constituents, and if they aren't, you vote in a new one (obv it doesn't really work out that way in the real world. Maybe Finland or something).
And this is kind of what I'm talking about.
There's this defeatism everywhere lately (much of it is astroturfing, but I believe it's been somewhat effective, unfortunately) with people being like, "I'm totally a leftist (often sus), and the conservative Democratic party is just going to run their establishment candidate no matter what and there's nothing I can do so I'll throw away my vote on a third party, if I vote at all."
Some'll throw in something about "Genocide Joe" too, somewhat betraying their actual intentions and the true reality that most of them want nobody left of Donald Trump in that office...
Yet everyone seems to forget that Hillary Clinton very much was the establishment candidate in 2008. It was "her turn." Obama was just another nobody's on a debate stage with like a dozen other relative nobodies, and Hillary Clinton. It would have been like (if Trump actually attended the debates, just a thought experiment) if Doug Burgum, or Will Hurd became the GOP candidate over Trump despite the party doing everything it can ($$) to get Trump as the candidate. It would be unheard of.
In other words, Democrats were making preparations for her coronation. And none of that ended up mattering, because Democratic primary voters wanted Obama. I personally switched my affiliation from "independent" to "Democrat" to make that vote.
None of that mattered because the liberals/progressive/the left/etc.(voting) public made it very clear that they didn't give a shit what the Democratic party wanted, they want "that guy who gave that speech at the 2004 DNC." And that's who we got, and Hillary Clinton didn't run as a third party candidate or anything silly like that. We almost got it to happen again with Bernie... Different situation and discussion, though I do think things could be very different at the DNC now that Hillary is out of electoral politics .
(To be fair, Obama's demographics, and social media teams were on point and like a decade ahead of their time. Probably pretty rudimentary compared to that (or literally just the fact that they had a social media team)